Coyer had been back on base at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga., on March 12, 2012, when he suddenly died of cardiac arrest. Further details surrounding his death weren’t made public.

Efforts by NBC News to reach Coyer’s family on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Lesleigh Coyer, his younger sister, called her only sibling a protective "best friend" who was never quick to like the guys she chose to date. She told MLive.com that she and her brother, just two years apart, used to get into mischief all the time, such as toilet papering their neighborhood late at night.

The final resting place for Lesleigh Coyer’s partner-in-mischief — a decorated serviceman who loved lifting weights and riding his motorcycle, his obituary says — is Arlington National Cemetery. On Monday, a Reuters photographer took a picture of Lesleigh curled up on the ground in front of her brother’s grave, grieving. She and her parents were visiting the military cemetery in Virginia from Saginaw a day before the one-year anniversary of Coyer’s death.